A fixture on the Peruvian modernist and experimental scene since the early 1970s, percussionist, composer and artist Manongo Mujica has always worked across boundaries. Del Cuarto Rojo is a tribute to the late Peruvian painter Rafael Hastings, an old friend and collaborator of Mujica, who died in 2020. Combining atmospheric field recordings with synth drones, aching string arrangements and the indigenous inflections of Mujica’s percussion, the album is touched by a profound, cinematic melancholia. Except, that is, on “Cuerpos En Fuga” (“Bodies On The Run”), which unexpectedly detours into baritone-heavy Arkestral groove.

Hallucinatory, Peruvian jazz-fusion from pivotal, Lima-based percussionist-composer Manongo Mujica, paying tribute to his departed friend Rafael Hastings how he knows best - RIYL Michael Ranta, Jocy De Oliveira, Laszlo Hortobagyi ‘Del Cuarto Rojo’ is Mujica’s first solo album since 2016 and sees him tie strands of soundtrack composition and improvised psychedelia to evoke the life of his friend, visual artist Rafael Hastings. Collaborators for almost half a century, Mujica and Hastings developed a cross-discipline method of making music and painting inspired by each other, resulting many soundtracks for dance and scores for video works that were crucial in the context of Lima’s creative milieu during the ‘70s. When Hastings passed away at the cusp of the pandemic in 2020, Mujica began the process of preparing sounds and embarking a personal musical journey in honour of his peer, drawing upon all the techniques learned over the decades - from field recordings and sound montage to experiments with jazz and traditional music - to stitch this absorbing psychedelic tapestry. Working within interzones also explored by Mujica’s collaborators such as Richard Pinhas, Acid Mothers Temple, João Pais Filipe, and Alan Courtis, the album benefits from the depth of feeling also supplied by crackshot players from the Peruvian scene; Pauchi Sasaki (violin), José Quezada (cello), Terje Evensen (electronic effects), Jean Pierre Magnet (Saxophone), Cristobal, Daniel and Gabriel Mujica (sons of Manongo Mujica, on percussion, string and wind arrangements). Driven by Mujica’s mutable percussive tekkerz, they head in pursuit of an elusive muse, deftly evoking the sense of movement thru vast, natural, nocturnal space and the imagination on their trek from the wide open scenes of ‘Desert’ to the concrète jazz roil of ‘Humor negro’, via sumptuous classical string orchestration in ‘Mar’, and big band tropicalia on ‘Cuerpos en fuga’ that logically prepares and lures listeners into the psychedelic funereality of ‘Procession’ and ‘Inciendos’.

Percussionist Manongo Mujica, who began playing in Peruvian rock bands in 1970, went on to fuse jazz with the country’s roots-based music in the 1980s, has composed, improvised, and collaborated with the likes of Acid Mothers Temple and Richard Pinhas. In 2020, he received the news that his dear friend of nearly 50 years, visual artist Rafael Hastings, had died, prompting the musical travels on Del Cuarto Rojo, as he tried to detail their friendship in sound. The results are evocative, touching, and sadly beautiful. “Mar” finds his subtle hand drums providing the grounding for long, elegant cello and violin lines that skirt the lines between tribute and dirge. “Cuerpos en Fuga” pits his percussion over the sound of waves before a horn section driven by a baritone saxophone provides a clipped melodic framework. It’s a track that rides Mujica’s groove, allowing horns and strings to skitter and stretch before being left on their own to echo into nothing. “Procesion” on the other hand, is a sub-conscious drone topped by gongs as it grows. A pulse provides the picture of the track’s title as the tune suggests Hastings’ wake or perhaps a late night canoe ride through a river surrounded by unsullied jungle. Elsewhere, the record pits field recordings against pizzicato bass or disembodied voices as Mujica paints aural paintings inspired by his late friend.